News

SALES of the country’s three biggest-selling tabloids fell by about 2% in the first week of the new Metro and Herald AM freesheets, according to industry sources.

This is a bigger-than-expected hit to sales and highlights the competitive threat posed by the freesheets, which hit the streets on October 10. The Irish editions of The Sun, the Daily Star and The Mirror normally sell about 300,000 copies between them each day, indicating that about 6,000 sales a day were lost in the first week of the freesheets. Metro is also likely to have hit the sales of the Irish Independent and the Evening Herald.

The coming weeks will see a subtle shift in the distribution tactics employed by Metro, a joint venture between Associated Newspapers, The Irish Times and Sweden’s Metro International. The paper initially focused its attentions on the city centre to gain visibility among both readers and potential